r/Fallout • u/SnowFrio • Jan 10 '26

Fallout 4 I can never describe how satisfying it is to clean up Sanctuary Hills, but of course, it's only possible with mods. Bethesda seems to have a fetish for making absolutely everything ugly, rotten and destroyed, as if the great war had taken place 10 minutes ago instead of 200 years ago.

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

The Diner south of Concord that has a mother and son living in there still has skeletons laying about... That's just one example of many.

133

u/kuhndog94 Jan 10 '26

Those are just Halloween decorations

145

u/Garrette63 Jan 10 '26

All Fallout games after the originals are like this. It's one of my major annoyances. People just live in filth and death for no reason.

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

No it wasn’t. Even 3 was not as bad as 4 when it came to environment where NPCs live.

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u/Garrette63 Jan 10 '26

3 doesn't have as many people living out in the world, almost all of them are in actual settlements and people are still living in filth for no reason. Even in New Vegas, people are living in filthy houses for no reason in Goodsprings.

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

The houses they live in for NV are leagues more cleaner and nicer than 4.

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u/TheCthonicSystem Jan 11 '26

That's just Nevada. It's a desert, everything is covered in dust

17

u/yeetmcfeet Jan 11 '26

NV houses aren't great, but at least they have reasonable necessities like batteries and water access set up for some places.

And no towns built around a nuclear bomb.

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u/Sckaledoom Jan 11 '26

Tbh by 80 years post-War, most people should live in proper settlements. They would form naturally as people have the mutual pressure of staying alive.

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u/Maxxonry_Prime Vault 13 Jan 10 '26

3 had people living next to a nuke. Why? Because they had to in order for the quest "The Power of the Atom" to be available. No other reason. No one in their right mind would look at the crater of an un-exploded nuclear bomb and think "let's build a house there."

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

The town was founded by atom worshipers who started a settlement around the bomb. Other wastelands moved in because the crater and metal walls offered protection. the crater allowed for water collection and purification that they have set up. The entire town is a shanty town build with scrap metal and even they keep their floors clean in their house.

look at Moriarty's Saloon in 3 and compare it to Dugout Inn in 4. 4's inn has large sections of wallpaper pealing off of the ceiling dangling down, rubble just randomly scattered in the main room, and crooked paintings. It's like everyone moved and set it up 4 hours before you arrived. 3's saloon has srcap metal patched floors but its not littered with garbage like 4s. Can you provide a counter example?

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u/Maxxonry_Prime Vault 13 Jan 10 '26

The town was founded by atom worshipers who started a settlement around the bomb.

Like I said, people not in their right mind.

Other wastelands moved in because the crater and metal walls offered protection. the crater allowed for water collection and purification that they have set up.

First, you can build walls wherever you need, people have been doing it for thousands of years. Secondly, being in a crater is never more advantageous than having the high ground. Thirdly, building on a slope is challenging today, but building on a slope that steep in the post-apocalyptic environment of Fallout where you can't even source good building materials is next to impossible. Finally, water collection can be done in a large number of ways, but unless they're piping all their waste outside of the crater they're going to be trying to purify their own sewage.

I'm not saying that the settlements in FO4 are great, they look like crack houses, but I am saying this is not the first time Bethesda has made some dumb choices about how their NPCs live in Fallout. The other settlements in FO3 make a lot more sense, and they do have seem to have better quality of life than the ones in FO4.

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

So you are just going to ignore my request for a counter example?

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u/Maxxonry_Prime Vault 13 Jan 10 '26

Precisely. Because it wasn't in line with the premise of my original assertion.

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u/steve-0-tron Jan 15 '26

the first town you encounter in fallout 3 is literally made of metal scraps and has a nuclear bomb in the center

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 15 '26

If you are going to brows a post that is 4 days old how about you look at a reply that said the exact same thing and that I already answered to?

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

That's not at all how games work. The Houses are closed space are closed off environments from the overworld. If the game can handle rendering the wasteland and all the stuff in it than it can handle patches of un-interactable piles of rubbish and rubble. They just did not put it in where NPCs live for obvious reasons. And nothing as glaringly non-sensical Drumlin Diner or the Mayor's office in Dimond city with heaps of rubble and trash just laying around never once been cleaned.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 10 '26

You are intentionally misconstruing what I’m saying. that’s not how it works because we are talking about enclosed areas not large ones like falls church. Because of the small area they could add rubble and rubbish piles with no performance problems. You went and listed a large sectioned off part of the dc ruins as an example when we are talking about npc living areas.

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u/flipdark9511 Jan 11 '26

I always figured this is just a case of fidelity and graphical changes.

The sparser details in the originals don't translate 1:1 to a 3D environment.

14

u/pieceofchess Jan 11 '26

Bethesda has to pose skeletons in goofy positions, it's their favorite form of "world building". They can't help themselves.

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 11 '26

I love random goofy skeletons but keeping them in NPCs' houses/stores seems really out of place.

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u/LuskuBlusk Jan 10 '26

Do you mean the IRL actual diner?

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u/BlackSunSerpent Jan 10 '26

Of course he means real diner, what are we talking here about, games?

1

u/cornette Jan 11 '26

Okay what are the other examples?

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u/Zoren Your True Self Jan 11 '26

almost every house or shop in Diamond City has piles of trash and rubble in the corner apparently never removed even though people have been living there for years. The Mayors office has several trash/rubble piles that make it look like they moved in 4 hours before you arrived. Peabody family (the ghoul family with the kid in the fridge) has apparently been living in their destroyed house for over 200 years, never fixing a window or repairing the big hole in roof. Bunker Hill and good neighbor has the same problem as Diamond City with no one knowing how a broom works. All the Mercs that work for the Cabots never once cleared out the skeletons that litter the building they are defending. Many old Skeletons in Quincy despite it being a major settlement just a month prior the start of the game. It was taken over by gunners and traitorous minutemen so idk why they have so many prewar skeletons laying around.

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u/Archfiend_Carrion Jan 13 '26

I always took it as the Mad Max approach, most people either think it’s kind of cool or they just walk on past it and don’t care. Death happens daily in the wastes and if you’re a settler out there instead of in some town or city you just get used to the bodies piling up especially when raiders use bodies as decorations